West Virginia's Suffrage Movement

Women did not obtain the right to vote in West Virginia or
nationally until 1920. The original constitution of Virginia
allowed only white men who owned property to vote. The property
qualification was dropped in the revised 1850 constitution. When
West Virginia joined the Union in 1863, its constitution provided
for the same voting privileges as Virginia's. With the adoption of
the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870, black men
were granted the right to vote, although local laws often prevented
them from actually voting.

Some western states and territories allowed women to vote in
local elections in the late 1800s. The national women's suffrage
movement is usually dated to a convention at Seneca Falls, New
York, in 1848. Historian Anne Wallace Effland dates West Virginia's
suffrage movement to the formation of the West Virginia Equal
Suffrage Association (WVSEA) in Grafton in 1895, which combined
nine smaller clubs into a statewide organization. Within the first
year, seven of the nine clubs were dissolved.

In addition to suffrage organizations, other women's groups
played an active role in campaigning for a woman's right to vote.
Groups such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which
lobbied to prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol also
advocated women's voting rights. The WCTU believed women would
elect more virtuous public officials and vote to ban the sale of
alcohol, considered to be the source of many domestic problems.

Effland suggests a second wave of interest in suffrage in West
Virginia began around 1905. By 1915, suffragists pressured the West
Virginia Legislature to such an extent that a referendum of the
state's voters was authorized. In November 1916, the all-male
electorate decisively rejected women's suffrage. During the World
War I years of 1917 and 1918, many suffragists adopted a different
strategy. Their support of the war effort was ample proof of their
patriotism.

After the war, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
was proposed, giving the vote to women. The Constitution requires
three-fourths of all states to approve a constitutional amendment
before it becomes a law. In February 1920, the West Virginia
Legislature met in special session and were lobbied heavily by the
state's suffragists, led by Lenna Lowe Yost. On March 3, the House
voted for the amendment. In a fifteen to fourteen vote on March 10,
the state Senate made West Virginia the thirty-fourth of the
thirty-six states needed to ratify the amendment. That summer, Yost
became the first women to chair a major party convention at the
Republican National Convention, which nominated Warren G. Harding
for president.